![]() ![]() The article ends by considering the retrospective rereadings of the Deduction by Hermann Cohen and P. Doing so would also allow him to curb certain forms of skeptical empiricism, by showing that we cannot disprove, or rule out as unintelligible, human freedom, an afterlife, or divine providence. He wanted to achieve this result in a more theoretically satisfying manner than had skeptical authors. Rather, he wanted to sustain the skeptical claim that we cannot justify metaphysical claims about things in themselves, hence that we cannot gain metaphysical knowledge about the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the beginning of time, and the least parts of matter. Kant was not out to save ordinary knowledge from the skeptic, at least not originally, since he did not think such knowledge was in danger. ![]() ![]() The central theoretical claims of previous metaphysics were thus rendered void. To do this, he needed to show that their proper use in attaining metaphysical knowledge was restricted to (actual and possible) experience. His primary mission (in the Deduction) was not to justify application of the categories to experience, but to show that any use beyond the domain of experience could not be justified. Instead, the article contends that Kant's aims were primarily negative. This article argues that many (often Anglophone) interpreters of the Deduction have mistakenly identified Kant's aim as vindicating ordinary knowledge of objects and as refuting Hume's (alleged) skepticism about such knowledge. ![]()
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